For a desert rabbit, it’s hard to imagine what could be more terrifying than a hungry, nimble Harris’s Hawk. Except, that is, for five hungry, nimble Harris’s Hawks. We tend to think of raptors as solitary hunters, and for the most part that’s true. Unfortunately for the cottontails and jackrabbits of the American Southwest, however, […]
Tag: audubon
Thousands of Dead Seabirds Washed Up on Alaska’s Shores Again This Year
The first reports came in May. They were sparse, but enough to put seabird-monitoring coordinator Hillary Burgess on edge. “Here we go again,” she thought. By late June, almost every time she checked her inbox, yet more news of washed-up seabirds on the Alaskan coast greeted her. Volunteers had collected nearly 9,200 seabird carcasses by early […]
Potential Costs of Declining Water Levels at Great Salt Lake Could be in the Billions
Utah’s well-being hinges on the long-term health of Great Salt Lake. That reality is made even clearer in a report commissioned by the Great Salt Lake Advisory Council that outlines the potential economic costs that could ensue if the lake’s ecosystem collapsed. With Great Salt Lake’s water levels on a sustained downward trend, “further declines, […]
Final Plan for Arctic Refuge Drilling Could Cause Extinctions, Admits Government
The U.S. Department of the Interior last week took a major step toward the first-ever oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. In a decision that outraged but did not surprise environmentalists, the agency announced its final plan to develop one of the world’s last great wildernesses, acknowledging that its chosen course might wipe […]
A Widespread Pesticide Causes Weight Loss and Delayed Migration in Songbirds
With winter approaching, White-crowned Sparrows are migrating south from North America’s boreal forest to central and southern United States and Mexico, sometimes flying hundreds of miles in one night. The weeks-long trek is already a major endeavor for the one-ounce songbirds, and pesticides may be making the journey even more perilous, a new study shows. […]
Lead Ammo, the Top Threat to Condors, Is Now Outlawed in California
The magnificent California Condor has a nearly ten-foot wingspan—and in comparison, the number-one threat to the endangered raptor is practically microscopic. It lurks unseen in deer, elk, and other carcasses the birds scavenge. Ingesting less than a gram is enough to seriously sicken a condor; in the last 25 years, it has felled at least […]
Sandhill Crane Named Audubon California’s Bird of the Year
Sandhill Cranes (Grus canadensis)were once common throughout the west and especially in the California Central Valley. However their populations declined drastically as a result of unregulated hunting and habitat loss during settlement of the region. In California, the breeding population was reduced to fewer than five pairs by the 1940s. Fortunately, all populations of Sandhill […]
The Northern Harrier AKA Marsh Hawk
The Northern Harrier (Circus cyaneus) was also known as the Marsh Hawk in the United States and is known as the Hen Hawk in Eurasia (click on photos for full sized images). It breeds in the northern part of the northern hemisphere. On this Wikipedia commons map, the light green denotes breeding summer visitor, the […]